(1944)
Dir - Edward F. Cline
Overall: WOOF
The D-rent comedy duo Olsen and Johnson do an abysmal job of channeling Abbott and Costello's shtick with Ghost Chasers, (High Spirits); a dopey and lighthearted comedy horror romp that is absent of both comedy and horror. Though it may perk the interest of genre fans for featuring Lon Chaney Jr. in a bear suite, it just comes off as odd that Universal threw him into such a forgettable dud in the first place when his career was not even washed up yet and he was in the prime of his monster movie appearances. In any event, Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson may not be the most obnoxious vaudevillian nyuck nyuck pair of their era, but they sure are vanilla flavored. One would be hard-pressed to even known which one was which after watching this since they look the same and have zero differentiating quirks between them. Also, they never do or say anything that comes within a hundred miles of "funny". Much of this is owed to Edmond L. Hartman and Elwood Ullman horrendously lazy script though, which is peppered by way too many snore-inducing musical numbers and gags that are so wooden as to be indecipherable. In other words, be prepared to regularly ask out loud, "Wait, was that supposed to be funny?".
(1945)
Dir - Roy William Neill
Overall: MEH
While none of the films in Universal's stream of Sherlock Holmes adaptations are full-on horror, their tenth installment in the Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce series The House of Fear boasts a creepy Scottish castle, wailing winds, mutilated corpses that remain off screen of course, and characters claiming that ghosts are about. Loosely based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1891 short story "The Five Orange Pips", returning director Roy William Neill makes good use out of the Gothic setting that is full of secret passages and the like, as the bodies pile up and red herrings are thrown about. Of course it is Rathbone's Holmes that seems to have it all sussed out from the beginning, merely solidifying his suspicious with a couple of clever maneuvers that everyone else on board has to catch up with. This includes Bruce's trusty sidekick Dr. Watson who stays respectable enough to not come off as just bumbling comic relief, getting a fair amount to do in the process. The stakes never seem too extreme and it has a sufficient yet uninspired air to it, as if all of the personnel are going through their dialed-in motions. It is still fun for what it is though and hardly overstays its welcome at a mere sixty-nine minutes.
(1948)
Dir - Bernard Vorhaus
Overall: MEH
A plodding melodrama from Eagle-Lion Films, The Amazing Mr. X, (The Spiritualist), fuses supernatural gaslighting with film noir motifs, yet it does so in a forgettable manner. This was designed as a starring vehicle for Austrian-born Turhan Bey, who plays a smirking and suave psychic medium that manages to charm the pants off of Cathy O'Donnell even after his seance fakery is exposed. The co-existing plot concerns O'Donnell's older widowed sister Lynn Bari who becomes psychologically duped into believing that her dead husband is haunting her, all while Richard Carlson gets the cuckold treatment and seems to be the only one hip to something fishy going on. It is all fine and good performance wise and the characterizations are sensationalized if still plausible in such a context, though Donald Curits is too one-note and flimsy to get behind as the story's villain. Director Bernard Vorhaus and cinematographer John Alton do appropriate work in creating a creepy mood with some nifty camera work, even if everything goes the way of Scooby-Doo style revelations instead of genuine ghostly shenanigans. Any black and white movie with disembodied hands and heads floating around, plus a house set upon crashing waves and cliffs is at least heading in the right direction, even if the story is absurd and the presentation never manages to light a spark.
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